A Synopsis of the Indian GIS Industry

By
Ganapathy Venkatachalam

Technological progress is perhaps
the most important source of structural change in an economy, because
it alters the mix of products, industries, firms and jobs. A market
perspective of the technology gives a better view of the demand and
need for any such technology. In an attempt to better understand these
issues, this article explores the current status of the GIS industry in
India along with various challenges facing the Indian geospatial
industry.

With increasing globalization and the integration of various economies
into the international world economic order and the World Bank taking
interest in formulating liberalization and structural adjustment
programs, public finance and fiscal policy have acquired a new
dimension. Governments are taking more interest in investing in
technologies and applications for the future, leading to opportunities
for growth. Therefore, the role of individual governments is more
prominent. With increased emphasis on better policing system, India
could form a potent force and facilitate its industrial development.

India in GIS
Today, questions of how to make a profit and sustain a competitive
advantage are frequently asked by every type of organization. Many of
the technological barriers to enterprise deployment of geospatial data
have been broken and the organizational "champions" of this technology
must take the steps necessary to empower their entire operation with
"location intelligence." Two interrelated factors are driving the
spatial market today. One is the notion that geospatial data is no
longer a specialized type of information available only to GIS and CAD
experts. Rather, it's becoming part of the enterprise dataset, so that
many people who have previously not had access to spatial data can use
it. Second, if more companies want to share these data across their
organizations, they must ensure that it is available in an open
architecture-computing environment.

Some of the technologies that most spatial advocates agree are driving
innovation in our applications are:

Database Technologies

Mobile Computing

Sensors

Standards and Data Sharing

Emerging Applications
Applications like vehicle tracking are seen as a huge potential with
government willing to invest in such applications, the recent example
being municipalities of Hyderabad and Vijaywada. Also with versatile
applications like RF-based vehicle tracking getting attention (as
recently a pilot project was launched based on the New Delhi- Jaipur
highway, with real time data on the fleet of vehicles which can also be
accessed by clients on the Internet), new avenues for companies are
opening up. Not only vehicle tracking, last year the municipality of
Bangalore launched a GIS-based property assessment, which was the first
of its kind.

Recent initiatives by organizations like NRDMS (National Resources Data
Management System) taking up national level Natural Resources mapping
is seen as a major step for the potential growth of the industry.
International cooperation has also seen a new dimension with India
collaborating with Iceland to incept an "Earthquake Forecast Center."

Indian GIS Policy
For a long time many felt a need for a major change in the Indian map
policy, which was recently obliged. Survey of India, the premium
authority which possesses the onus of defining and maintaining a map
policy, has recently introduced bifurcated map policies for civilian as
well as defense applications.

Defense Series Maps (DSMs) - These will be the topographical
maps (on Everest/WGS-84 Datum and Polyconic/UTM Projection) on various
scales (with heights, contours and full content without dilution of
accuracy). These will mainly cater to defense and national security
requirements. This series of maps (in analog or digital form) for the
entire country will be classified, as appropriate, and the Ministry of
Defence will formulate the guidelines regarding their use.

Open Series Maps (OSMs) - OSMs will be brought out
exclusively by Survey of India (SOI), primarily for supporting
development activities in the country. OSMs will bear different map
sheet numbers and will be in UTM Projection on the WGS-84 datum. Each
of these OSMs (in both hard copy and digital form) will become
"Unrestricted" after obtaining a one-time clearance of the Ministry of
Defense. SOI will ensure that no civil and military Vulnerable Areas
and Vulnerable Points (VA's/VP's) are shown on OSMs.

The map policy has received a mixed response, as some feel a necessity
for further clarity on the policy, as during the recently held one-day
seminar on Geoinformatics For Socioeconomic Development The panel,
which included heads of various organizations including Dr DP Rao, NK
Agarwal, GS Kumar and others, felt that, The new map policy, in its
present form, is grossly inadequate in meeting the growing needs of
industry and infrastructure development and hoped that the government
would rework on it.

Challenges Ahead of the Development in Indian IndustryPrivacy Issues: With extensive use of personal information for
demographic analysis, issues arise concerning the proper use of such
information. One other area being mobile-based tracking, where issues
related to individual privacy and the misuse of personal information
can be of a concern. Also, increasing satellite imagery resolution can
be seen as a threat for personal as well as national security,
especially in the absence of global policy.

Sustained Growth: With increasing introduction of new companies
using geospatial technology, the GIS industry needs to sustain its
growth, so that small to medium-sized companies can compete equally.
This is sometimes referred to as the "squeeze-syndrome." High-end
companies try to squeeze the low-end companies to make more profit.
Partnership is one way to survive, in addition to specialization in
niche solutions.

Storage and Depository: As the flow of information grows, more
initiatives need to be taken by the Indian government for digital
information preservation, the prime example being the U.S., where in
the Library of Congress has given the responsibility to develop one of
eight national initiatives for digital information preservation to
Stanford and the University of California-Santa Barbara. The
Stanford/UCSB team will form a National Geospatial Federated Digital
Repository to design an infrastructure and collect materials across the
spectrum of geographic formats. The digitally manufactured materials to
be collected and preserved will range from earth images taken from
satellites (Landsat), to other cartographic content from university,
corporate and government resources, as well as websites. The repository
will preserve content vital for the study of history, science,
environmental policy, urban and population studies, census construction
and analysis, and other fields requiring U.S. geospatial information.
The following issue was raised in the recently held "NSDI-V Workshop,"
where the need for a national repository of spatial data was strongly
felt by all the participating departments and the urgency to quickly
operationalize it was stressed.

Open Minded: New applications and areas where GIS can accrue
specifically to India need to be identified. The government needs to
invest in these new ideas and encourage public/private partnership. Of
significant interest is real estate and urban planning where the
government needs to play a much more major role in investing and
prioritizing of such activities.

Policy: Flexible and evolving governmental policy, which helps
the needs of the industry, still keeping in mind national and security
interests of the country. Security cannot be a secondary issue.

Open Source: Open source has its own pros and cons. The
introduction of applications like Google Earth has created a sense of
awareness about the capability of satellite imagery combined with GIS,
which has created more usage of GIS but has also raised concerns about
the availability of sensitive data. Hence, not only in public domain
but also the governmental outlook needs to be attended upon.

Challenges are not limited, but with the GIS industry growing in
importance and entering new domains, the GIS industry needs to lead and
not follow.

Conclusion
It is imperative for any technology to create more employment
opportunities and make collective efforts to percolate the benefits to
the rural areas, especially in a developing country like India. Even
with the speculative approach, there is a general belief that spatially
referenced technologies will continue to grow in importance, not only
in the realm of research advancement, but in the commercial arena as
well. It is important to our understanding of GIS applications to
explore the relationships between commercialization and the scientific
inputs driving technological development. There is a strong need for an
in-depth study to be undertaken to understand the current trends in the
Indian geospatial market and to make an attempt to define the future
roadway for a steady growth in the industry. Most importantly,
understanding a triad of science-technology-policy shall be the need of
the hour.